


Collision

by lasergirl



Category: CSI: Miami, CSI: NY
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:52:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Collision

_**CSI: Miami/NY: Collision (CRY FOR BETA!!)**_  
**Title:** Collision  
**Fandom:** CSI Miami/NY  
**Rating:** PG  
**Pairing:** Mac Taylor/Horatio Caine  
**Notes:** Sequel to "Breadcrumbs," so please read that first.  
**Warnings:** blood, abduction and two men angsting.

**Opening Drabble:**  
He's cold all over, except where pain blossoms; the soles of his feet lacerated, his wrists and ankles burning. The dull ache of his separated shoulder keeps time with his heart. In the midst of it all, Calleigh bears a cell phone, the tiny face aglow.

"No," Horatio groans, his voice ragged.

"He said you'd want to talk to him," and she holds out the phone.

Across the hundreds of miles, Horatio hears the crystal-clear voice of Detective Taylor in his ear; "Caine. You wanna explain to me how your blood got all over a dead guy in New York?"

**Collision:**

For a moment it's all he can do not to laugh - which he isn't sure he could do anyway, with the bruises and the soup of painkillers and glucose in his veins - instead he manages a wheeze that might pass for one, fingers skidding on the tiny phone, palms slippery with sweat.

"I'm looking at three separate IDs that say it's yours. We're still working on the victim," papers rustle on the other end of the phone; Mac digging through the battlefield of his desk. "You got any theories for me?"

"Well -" Horatio deadpans "there was this time I got grabbed out of my house in the middle of the night -" but he doesn't get to finish before Calleigh swoops in for the phone, ducking away so he can't see the painted look of panic she's trying to hide.

"You'' have to call him back," and when she hangs up there is silence in the tiny room.

_He'd refused treatment by the time the SWAT team arrived, and when the scene investigators rolled in he gave them everything he could - blood, the jagged plastic ties, the washcloth and every detail he could pick from his own abused brain. He'd swapped his bloodied pyjamas for a paramedic's paper gown - even insisted his clothes be bagged and tagged - and would have stayed long into the evening but for the insistence of the team - his team - that the hospital was a safer place for him. As the paramedics were picking out shards of glass and dressing his feet, a quiet Calleigh came and stood by him._

"I thought you'd never get here," he said lowly, almost afraid to meet her gaze. She wasn't far from tears; with the relief, suddenly neither was Horatio.

"We almost didn't," and she patted his arm as the paramedics bundled him into the back of the ambulance and the doors slammed before he could even ask why.  


**

True to his word and stubborn Gotham instinct, Mac Taylor calls back when Horatio is alone and staring uselessly at the ceiling, feeling his pulse in his feet and waiting for the Tylenol to kick in.

"Yeah?" He has his phone open and to his ear before his shoulder violently reminds him it is wounded. He gasps, "Yeah - ah - Horatio."

"I knew you'd want to talk to me," and Mac's growl sends shivers through him, "Tell me you didn't kill this guy. I've got trace amounts of your blood on his jeans and shoes, but his shirt sleeves are soaked in it."

Dazed, Horatio wonders just how much Mac's holding back.

"You know what I know," he says wearily, "Maybe more. My CSI's are flying solo on this for now. All I know is what I told them. They pulled me out of a warehouse in Hallandale six hours ago, so you tell me."

There's silence at the other end, Mac fitting the pieces together. "Are you alright?"

Strangely, Horatio's voice catches in his throat when he tries to say "yes" and it comes out like a strangled "almost."

_He was pulled from deep sleep to blind panic, with the glare of a flashlight always in his eyes. He had struggled and was rewarded in his efforts by a punch to the face, splitting open his lip and cracking open blood vessels in his nose. Half-suffocated by the gag, he'd been manhandled down the stairs and out to the street. No, the streetlight didn't illuminate his attacker, no, he couldn't see the make or model of the car before he was flung into it. He knew the man was strong, at least, could force Horatio's sleep-numbed body into action before his brain even started awake. From dreamsleep to blind terror in under ten seconds._

What Mac tells him is a puzzle, the pieces oddly shaped. The victim - and now that Horatio's blood is on him, the potential kidnapper is found dead on the 8:49 from Miami. The plane was full, and upon landing a passenger reported a man asleep - maybe already dead - in the seat.

"We got the passenger list from American, the victim was a Mister Andrew Keith "

"You mean perp," Horatio corrects, and waits for the answering "oh" from Mac when he finds the right word.

"Autopsy's going on now. The initial externals are showing blunt force trauma to the head, moderate bruising. Not sure if there was enough force to kill him. But his clothes are covered in your DNA and we found some hair that matches. He's covered in evidence but we still don't know what happened."

Horatio wonders vaguely if they used dogs to find him, but Mac is still talking; "- at least, all his ID says he lives in West Miami. I'll be there in six hours," which brings him back to himself with a start and funny flip in the pit of his stomach.

"What did you say?" but there's only the lazy laugh and Mac's voice crackling into static as his cell phone cuts out.

Horatio hangs his head with fatigue - everything hurts, and he doesn't know where his cuts and bruises end and muscle cramps begin. The flash-memory of himself curled into a fetal ball inside a sticky black circle frays what little nerves he has left and for a while, when he believes no one is watching, he buries his head in the pillow and quivers into a drugged, nervous sleep.

**

Mac blows in like winter from the Northern Coast, little with him but a scene case and a change of clothes. His rumpled look indicates he came straight to the hospital after landing. The tinge of cigarette smoke from a taxi still hangs around him.

It is easy to see he is concerned; this comes out in the gentle bedside manner that Horatio never suspected he had. When he speaks it is uncommonly earnest and his gaze is open, clear as the Miami sky.

"I understand you were processed on-site," Mac says, testing the waters. He has a sheaf of colour printouts in his hand, digital close-ups of the cuts and scratches that adorn Horatio's skin. They are so close they are nearly unidentifiable as human and more resemble sculpture; the curl of a fist becomes a landscape, the hollows between his ribs a long line of breaking surf. "There are a few things about your initial exam," he fans the pictures across Horatio's lap, "that I need to examine more closely. Specifically, there are these -" and with veed fingers Mac spans the dark slashed bruise line between Horatio's shoulder blades, photographed like a string of migrating birds between mountain peaks.

Horatio holds his breath and feels with perfect body clarity the spread of the hot ache across his spine. The bruises are deep angry red and purple, and in the brief twelve hours they have only flowered more elegantly across his pale skin. Mac peels away the hospital smock to expose the marks. As the gentle fingers probe, Horatio shivers, bowing his head to the touch; the back of his neck arches gracefully.

Mac fingerwalks across the Braille of Horatio's spine, his breath whispering through his lips. "There's an imprint here. You know the way a Polaroid picture develops? When your team took those photos your body was still reacting to the initial injury. This is not a print where he pushed you - this is an impact bruise. You were in a car accident."

"A tire iron? Car jack?" Horatio wracks his tired brain for answers, "It was behind me, but my hands were bound."

"We'll need this," Mac reaches into his case for the lightweight digital camera he carries, and a photographer's spectrum card. "Particularly with these lights. The bruises may deepen even more over time, do you bruise easily?"

Horatio shrugs and looks at the insides of his arms, where the assailant's iron fingers have left purple streaks and blotches.

"I guess so," says Mac, and he snaps the pictures.

There's a fine thread of sanity for Horatio and it's knowing that he's alive and not in danger of being dragged off again into the night, but the reassurance doesn't make him feel any better. When Mac moves to help him redress, the familiarity of movement, the unseen motion of someone else's hands behind his back makes Horatio freeze awkwardly, conflict struggling along with his racing heart.

"Just step away," he says, trying for evenness. He thinks it sounds a little like panic. It's body memory, burned into a level of his subconscious he can never expunge:

_It was a man his own height, heavy but not with fat. The man's body was burnished muscle, his arms bulging obscenely. One hand pinned the washcloth over Horatio's mouth while the other had an easy grasp of his wrists. The cloth muffled what cries he tried to make, forced roughly between his teeth. Arid cotton fibres caught in his teeth and furred his tongue, choking his panicked breaths into silence. When the hand pulled away he saw jailhouse ink, a flash of ballpoint blue flying south for the winter._

Mac moves away from him like it's fire, dropping the edge of the thin smock, taking two steps backwards. Three feet of space is nearly enough room to breathe.

Horatio bites his lip and wills his nervous twitches into submission. The butterfly of panic hammers behind his sternum, threatening to burst. He covers his mouth with a sweating palm, bites into the meat of his hand. Silence. He counts thirty agonized seconds in his head.

Then, "I can go," Mac says.

But things don't happen that way; first Horatio grabs for him, fingers twisted around Mac's shirtsleeves.

"Your suspect," Horatio breathes, "does he have any tattoos?"

**

The human foot is subjected to an average of 6.7 psi during locomotion, and can sustain pressures of up to two tons while running. But that is in peak condition, and Horatio finds walking painful even with the cushioning bandages mummying his feet. There are eleven stitches in his left foot, sixteen in the right.

_That was the one he'd jammed deep into the darkest recesses of the already pitch-black trunk in his endeavor to leave bread crumbs. The broken glass in his wounds was driven in even more deeply- at the time it had been painless._

The trunk of the car was hot in the Miami night, choking and brutal, the buzz of a ratty muffler rumbled just inches from his ear. It seemed to him they were lurching, bobbing over curbs and speed bumps, scraping around corners. Still groggy, stunned by the darkness and dizzy from his captor's pinprick, Horatio could feel something hard against his back. Too cramped to move, the drug quickly overtaking him, he groped for it, tingling fingers brushing metal before he finally succumbed.

But the walk from the taxi into the office is mercifully short, if anything in this whole drawn-out escapade can be called merciless. Everyone he meets pats his arm or smiles a sharp, nervous tic in relief. Mac follows behind at his elbow like an avenging angel.

"We're receiving the autopsy via satellite," Alexx tells him, when he sees the morgue's screens glowing blue and cold with New York City dead. She pushes him into the captain's chair so he can see the whole thing. "In real life, and in real time."

"In living colour," Horatio growls; Andrew Keith has a tattoo on his left hand of a flying swallow. "That's what I saw. That's exactly what I saw."

Mac has communications on speaker phone with Dr. Hawkes, the pathologist in New York City. "Make a note, Lieutenant Caine has a positive identification of the suspect's tattoo. Horatio, is this the perp?"

Worry lines lace Horatio's forehead as he surveys the examination table image of the half-shrouded Andrew Keith. It is hard to reconcile his impressions, the hot, brutal strength of the man versus this, the cold and remote digital feed. He sags. "Too early yet."

"Subject's fingernail parings and swabs show no trace of Lt. Caine's DNA," the video pathologist is saying, "That was the first thing we traced. External evidence indicates trauma to the left frontal area, in subject's hairline. Also, evidence of a seatbelt or other restraint, possibly from a car accident."

"The Diamond cabdriver says the perp paid him with a fifty - for a ten-dollar cab ride," Mac says. "Otherwise he wouldn't have given the guy a second thought. Said he appeared disoriented, possibly intoxicated."

"Or concussed." Horatio scowls to himself, flitting through the chain of events in his head. The vague looming memory of impact hangs over him. "What are the odds we're looking for a cranial event?"

"Well, the tox screens came back negative, so it's possible." There's a hiss of static on the line as Hawkes muses. "I can crack the skull if you give me ten minutes."

"A subdural hematoma can take time to accumulate." Alexx hovers over the two men's shoulders, craning to catch a view of the grisly procedure onscreen. "It's a personal thing, just like external bruising. Not all hematomas are fatal, but some can kill within a few hours."

A sudden realization flashes between the three of them, as they bathe in the blue light from the monitors. Horatio is the one that voices it:

"The force of a plane taking off would have aggravated it."

Onscreen, Hawkes puts aside his bone saw and lifts up a section of Andrew Keith's skull. A great red-black blood clot swells inside the dura matter.

"That sucker would have killed anyone," Hawkes says flatly.

They don't have complete findings for another two hours until the autopsy is complete, and in the time it takes for the pathologist to reduce the body to its composite parts, Horatio's painkillers wear off. He and Mac withdraw from the cold screens to confer around his desk.

"So if I'm the perp," Horatio says, rebuilding the timeline, "I grab my victim. Stick him in the trunk. I've got him knocked out so there's a twelve-hour window to work in, but something happens. I hit my head."

"We may have a vehicular event as indicated by the contusion and bleed in the brain." Mac jots down notes longhand on a pad of blue-lined paper. "Also, the perp's bruising was as advanced as yours at the time of your rescue. That puts you both at the scene, at the same time."

"All we're missing," says Horatio, "Is a crime scene."

**

The quad-feed surveillance tapes from the airport show up before the car does. Screened in 4x they show six-hour increments, departures and arrivals in the domestic terminal of Miami International. Andrew Keith shows up at 6:38am, checks no bags, has one carry on.

"We're waiting for a trace on his bag," says Mac immediately, "I have agents at La Guardia working with the terminal staff. The second they get it, we'll hear from them."

Horatio is hunched over at his desk, forcing himself to breathe through the dull ache between his shoulder blades. The day drags on without conclusions, without evidence, without motive. The terminal videos show him nothing. Through the haze he grasps at ghosts, trying to nail down the fleeting thoughts as they drift through his mind.

"The cab driver said it was a ten-dollar fare," he croaks suddenly, the sound of his voice startling even himself, "So he ditched the car. Where can you get for ten bucks these days?"

Mac tilts the computer monitor around so they can both see, and pulls up a map of Miami. The airport glows green to the west, the parkways snake around in wild tangles.

"The basic fare for the first mile's three seventy," Horatio sketches a perimeter around the International Airport with one finger. "Ten would take you out four miles."

"Christ," Mac groans, "There's no way your teams can sweep an area of that size. The car could be anywhere."

"But," Horatio bares his teeth in a predatory smile, "we're not looking in the middle. Ten bucks puts you between miles three and four." His finger traces a halo across the map, passing over suburban streets like a radar's sweep. "Then you get 49th to Sunset, 7th to 87th, and our cabdriver will have something to say about that."

_Horatio knew when he swam towards consciousness that things were wrong. Muscles twisted roughly over abused bones, he hurt and there was no cause. He catalogued and diagnosed while the heavy drug paralysis left him, and either the man had taken him, beaten and raped him while he was unconscious or there was more to it._

He'd fretted that worry out before he'd even begun his attempts at escaping the hard plastic ties that bound his wrists, composed mentally the physical report he'd have to give, filed every salient detail in the appropriate place. Double-checked, tested each nerve and fibre before proceeding, so when the trauma team came and threw a blanket around his shoulders he dictated it.

That clarity seems to be slipping away from him now, or maybe it's the weird alienation that comes from watching the remote dissection of a human being on a table hundreds of miles away. Horatio lets his head sag into his hands, the weight of the past forty-eight hours pressing down on him.

"You want to grill him? You look like hell, Caine." Mac's not quite sympathetic but he means well; Horatio knows this. But there's no sense in turning away to lick his wounds now. No case gets broken without blood, sweat and tears, and he's pretty sure all of those fluids will end up in the mix sooner or later. Mac goes to take his arm when Horatio stands and gets pushed away.

"I can manage," he growls, and makes for the interview room and the cabdriver.

The cabdriver's a reedy, nervous kid not too far out of his teens. He speaks with an easy Cuban accent, the words rolling off his tongue like rain on glass. The cab license is his father's, not his own, and the first thing Horatio does is pounce on it.

"You look like your father, Armando, but not enough to help you pass for fifty-five. Why were you driving the cab two nights ago?"

The kid tries to play it cool but underneath it all is the smell of fear and nerves. "He doesn't work anymore but a cab license is gold. As long as he pays his fees they don't care who drives the car."

"I think I can let that go if you help me out." Horatio leans in closer to the kid, tries to draw him out of suspicion and into trust. "The ten-dollar fare you told us about - his name is Andrew Keith - where did you pick him up that night?"

The boy shrugs and draws a circle with the tip of his finger. The oils smudge a corona on the tabletop. "Somewhere out in Hialeah. I don't know. I don't normally cruise out that far."

"Could you be more specific?" With Mac standing so close behind his chair, Horatio has been demoted to the Good Cop. He can feel Mac's icy gaze sweeping the witness and the room, feels his eyes penetrating the feeble defense Horatio has thrown up . He is tired, and Mac knows it.

"I told you I don't drive out there much. Mostly it's just the airport to the hotel, hotel to the beach or to the clubs. If I don't know how to get there I just follow the main streets." The kid shifts uneasily. "The fare I got before that guy wanted to go out there so I drove him. You know, anything for a couple of bucks."

Mac steps into play. "Did he flag you down or did you get dispatched?"

"Flagged. He was walking into traffic and I stopped and picked him up. He looked drunk."

"He had a concussion. He was disoriented, Armando, think, was there anything nearby that you can remember to identify your location?"

The kid bites his lip while he thinks, fingernails rattling nervously against the tabletop. "Tracks. Railway lines. A couple minutes after I picked him up we hit an overpass, and I found East 8th. Thank God, too, cause I thought we'd never get out of there."

Horatio accordions out a city map across the table. "Look at this map, Armando, and see if you can help me out."

The kid traces his route backwards from the Airport, until his finger is marooned deep in the tangle of landlocked Miami-Dade. "Somewhere here."

"That's 103rd," Horatio cocks his head, following the snaking freeways and off ramps and the reticulated stripes of railway spurs. When he glances over his shoulder towards Mac, he's already got his cell phone out. "Mac, tell the search teams to concentrate on this area, three to four mile perimeter arc. Get me that car, and I can tell you exactly what happened."

**

Improbably, he falls asleep in the car, and when Calleigh looks in the rear view to check, Horatio is slumped like a broken doll against the door. His seatbelt rubs a red gash across his throat.

.... and that, friends, is where it ends so far.

What I Need:

The stuff I need help on is the ambience of the thing. I don't need any messing around with grammar or spelling at this point.

My dilemma is this: is there enough 'body' to this story, or does it fall short? I want something that'd be mildly believable, but I don't want too many characters cluttering up the action. I need Mac and Horatio to jump on each other eventually. I need all the puzzle pieces to fit.

The missing stuff (aka _deus ex machina_) in sort of chronological order:

\--they find the car and the trunk's covered in blood  
\--H. almost faints. Mac catches him.  
\--Mac takes him home... proto-slash ensues.  
\--DNA confirms it's the right car.  
\--the airport recovers the perp's bag and it's examined in NYC. it contains direct evidence that he was the guy who kidnapped H, and the motive.

Here's where it breaks down. I figured this should be a revenge kidnapping. So far the only suspect I have is the racing team owner from "Grand Prix" (and I forget her name). Is this viable? Would she hire a crazy thug to kidnap H?

The point of this story was to put H out of his own control, to have things happen to him he couldn't control and to find out how that affects him after everything.

My problem is that if I use the woman from "Grand Prix," there'd be a considerable amount of setting-up I'd have to do, and I'm not even sure the results would be worth it. So I need an opinion (or two) on that as well.

Also, the main pairing is Mac/Horatio but I LOVE the Calleigh/H dynamic as well and I want to throw in shades of that without getting other women in the way. That means Yelina *and* the Grand Prix woman can't be smelling sex all over H.

... not that anyone *does*, I'm just sayin'.  


Anyways, that's my cry for help. If there's anything else I can think of, I'll let you know. Thanks!!

...aka [](http://lasergirl.livejournal.com/profile)[**lasergirl**](http://lasergirl.livejournal.com/)


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